


Atrium

by kali_asleep



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Love, M/M, Sexual Tension, Valentine's Day, scmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 15:13:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kali_asleep/pseuds/kali_asleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A late Valentine's day 5 +1: Five times Sherlock gave John his heart, and the one time Sherlock got a heart in return (literally)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atrium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QuinnAnderson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuinnAnderson/gifts).



> A late but loving birthday and Valentin'es Day gift to my best friend, QuinnAnderson. As it was a surprise, this is un-beta'd and un-britpicked; there may be some minor edits going up when I get the chance. As always, I don't own Sherlock or any of its characters, though they seem to own me pretty hard.

**One**

The tang of chlorine and a jolt of unnatural warmth, the result of adrenaline and the rumbling pool heater.

“I will burn you. I will burn the heart out of you.”

His proposal is nearly as ridiculous as the whole, overdrawn situation. Sherlock informs Moriarty of the fact.

“I have been reliably informed that I don’t have one.”

Of course Moriarty won’t argue semantics; the madman has too much on the line to bother with the blood that thrums from Sherlock’s literally thumping heart.

“But we both know that’s not quite true.”

And then it isn’t, because Sherlock’s eyes slide immediately from Moriarty’s gaze to John’s. John Watson’s stare is less coolly reptilian but no less unblinking: it is a look that barely belies the worry tugging at his twitching lips. It is the look of a soldier who is indefatigably trusting. The look of a man who has taken his life and willingly placed it in Sherlock’s hands. Sherlock clutches at the weight of the gun in his fist, practically feels his pulse pounding around it. John nods.

~

**Two**

“You know, I almost went off and did cardiology instead.”

John’s comment comes in the dead heat of summer from behind one of his coveted (and frankly, far too expensive, given John’s pension and their lack of cases) medical journals. Non sequitur that it is, the remark still draws Sherlock’s attention away from his laptop. If John notices that Sherlock has looked up, he makes no note of it.

“But I knew I was going into the army, and if I did specialize like that I’d be stuck in some hospital miles off from the line. Guess you could say I just didn’t have the heart for the tedium.”

He laughs at his own joke and pulls the journal away from his face; his blue eyes are warm as they meet Sherlock’s own. The thick and frankly atrocious jumpers of the London winter have been replaced with simple tees. John returns to his reading, still chuckling quietly, allowing Sherlock to appreciate the too-tight cotton stretch—a shirt bought before the bullet shattered John’s morning fitness regimens. For a moment Sherlock envisions John stripped down to a tee and khaki fatigues, younger, leaner, more golden despite the way the Afghani sun bleaches the world around him. But imaginings are for those desperate to escape the reality of the moment, and Sherlock realizes simultaneously that he prefers John’s slight paunch and that behind his journal John has been waiting for him to respond. Sherlock says nothing. John shifts in his armchair, leans forward, and slides the open journal across the coffee table.

“The thing I miss the most about being active—or even working at a hospital—was the access. To research. Like here: fascinating front matter on the development of synthetic atrial valves, but the work they’re doing on it is still in progress, not available to the average GP with no connections.” John sighs. “What I wouldn’t give for that.”

Sherlock grunts non-committally.

He’ll call Mycroft later, hours after John has left to have a pint with Mike Stamford. The act of calling in a favor physically pains Sherlock, but the bemused tone on the other end of the call nearly makes it worth it.

In a few days John will rush up the stairs to the flat holding a package wrapped in thick, brown paper. “Have a new case, Sherlock?” he’ll ask, trying to pass it to his flatmate. Sherlock will again respond in monosyllables; John will unwrap the bundle with a huff. If Sherlock has calculated correctly (and he knows he has), John will fall silent as his eyes skim over the cover page and abstract to the yet-unfinished research on synthetic heart tissues. His lips will twitch into a quick grin, and Sherlock will only look up when he’s positive that John is peering pensively at him with those eyes, bright blue like the blood in diagrams of veins.

~

**Three**

A steady press and a rapid exhalation. Sherlock’s eyes fly open. His entire head aches and he feels seconds away from vomiting. He is alive, and when his eyes finally adjust to the unexpected sting of the dull fluorescents overhead they focus on John. John is close and seems to radiate the light above them; his calloused hands are still splayed over Sherlock’s chest, his lips are near enough for Sherlock to see that they are chapped and slightly torn. Sherlock observes for a moment as John’s eyes go from beast-blank to their familiar softness. The pound in Sherlock’s chest is so hard it hurts. There is a mobile phone pinioned between John’s ear and his shoulder, which falls to the floor with a tinny clatter. A shaky breath escapes John before his elbows give in and his head lands heavily on the man beneath him.

“You should be thankful I can save a man as quick as kill him. It’s been a while since I’ve had to do both in a day.” John’s words are muffled by Sherlock’s shirt; the patch of cloth and skin under John’s mouth grow warm. Sherlock doesn’t dare sit up, but tilts his head to the left to see the bloodied corpse of his assailant. The fractures to the man’s nose and jaw are obviously post-mortem. The two men still living lie on the floor, breathing noisily, waiting for the other to speak. As always, John breaks first.

“As soon as I saw him pull back with the syringe… God. My heart nearly stopped.”

Though it burns, Sherlock breathes a broken chuckle.

“Mine did.”

And then they are both laughing, exhausted and shaking on the abandoned office building’s scuffed linoleum. Sherlock’s heart thumps so heavily under John’s touch that he speculates it might tear from his chest and beat its way into John’s solid hands.

~

**Four**

“I hated you.”

The clamor of London traffic nearly drowns out the words. Drapes stir at the window, blocking the city from view. He is achingly close to being done.

“I don’t care,” Sherlock drawls, tightening his grip on the Browning in his hand.

“You wanna know why?”

A torn up armchair keens and creaks as Sebastian Moran settles heavily into it. The nasty gnarl of scarring that starts above his brow and ends at his jaw stands in stark relief to his blanched face.

“I. Don’t. Care.”

“Well, you’re certainly taking your time about it.” Moran manages one shaky guffaw and leans forward, clutching his left shoulder.

“I hated you because I could see that, even if Jim took you down, he’d never be done with you. He’d ‘a kept trying to rip at you, would have had to tear past your cold, dead flesh and crack at your ribs just to get at that heart. Wouldn’t ‘a stopped until every single bit of Sherlock Holmes belonged to him. And that ain’t just a metaphor.”

Dark, wet rivulets crisscross down Moran’s forearm and puddle on the wood floor. Sherlock blocks out the sounds of London; it becomes white noise punctuated by the hiss of Moran’s breath. The sniper is no longer looking at Sherlock, but gazing glassily into some unseen distance.

“ ‘E was so brilliant—sharper than you—and I was addicted to it. Still am, even after you took him from me. Doesn’t make no sense, but keeping up his work made it feel like he was alive, like I could still feel him beatin’ in my chest.”

Moran lazily refocuses on Sherlock, his face and body already slack with blood loss. Sherlock remains unmoving (but if the gun trembles slightly in his hand, neither man says anything of it).

“You know how that is, though. How’s that doctor of yours? Last time I checked in he looked like he was ready to off himself. Of course, if you hadn’t found me so quick, I’d ‘a done it myself.”

Sherlock takes a step forward and Moran grins. The cool veneer of Sherlock’s expression breaks into a livid scowl. Moran knows that he’s dying—is trying to provoke Sherlock into ending it sooner. Sherlock wants to draw it out, twist him into an agony never before experienced, but right outside the window there is London and beyond that there is John and as soon as he is done—

The safety on the gun releases with a clunk. It’s done for effect, they both know. Moran clicks his tongue, three sharps _tsks_.

“You and Jim never realized how easy to figure out you both were.”

Moran leans back into the armchair and lifts both arms in an open shrug, totally exposed.

“Ah, well. A heart for a heart, I suppose.”

~

**Five**

His hair has grown long enough that it falls to his shoulders in unruly waves. Sherlock ties it back when he’s working, but tonight he’s let it loose, let it shade him from the revolting look of pity Mycroft levels at him from across the room. The git has just come to inform him that he has to _wait_ , wait despite the fact that Moriarty is dead and Moran is dead and Moriarty’s crime network is nothing more than dusty cobwebs that Sherlock personally pulled from the corners. Mycroft muttered things like _personal safety_ , _contingency plan_ , and _legal difficulties of total resurrection_ , and Sherlock continued to snub his brother’s existence. Neither has spoken for nearly a quarter of an hour; Sherlock can’t fathom why Mycroft remains, intruder in the small, grey hotel room that had served as his headquarters for the past two weeks.

Being on the outskirts of London, so close to home, had nearly driven Sherlock mad, and Mycroft’s broken promise (he should be home already, he should be home already) does little to temper his temper. But loath as Sherlock is to admit it, he would have likely died (or worse, failed) without Mycroft’s aid, so instead Sherlock channels all of his twitching anxiety into the notebook beneath him. It is a spiral bound stenographer’s pad: its pages are worn with ink and tea and the wire binding is bent and coming undone. It does not close properly anymore or lie completely flat, vigorously thumbed through as it has been for the past three years.

After the fall, there was no skull, no Lestrade, no rapid fire conversations via text or webcam chats at the more mundane crime scenes. No John—not even the empty air of Baker Street that Sherlock would speak aloud to simply because it promised the _return_ of John, held his shape in some strange electrical presence even after he’d left to go to Tesco’s or waste his time at the surgery. And so Sherlock had bought a notebook, some simple means of recording each deduction, organizing every thread he plucked at to reach the tangled knot of Moriarty’s empire.

It had started out with notes, deductions scribbled between the lines and out to the margins and even sometimes over the flimsy cardboard cover. Slowly, though, it became more: a repository for unrelated thought, a place to work out the things he’d never realized he’d needed to say. He’d begun to draw, a task years unfamiliar to his fingers. The sketches began as studies in anatomy and were soon transformed. A hard deltoid suddenly became the star-scarred line of John’s back; a dislocated lower jaw wormed its way into Moriarty’s wolfish sneer.

He outlined hearts. Arching aorta, clenching ventricle, the muscle caught in the breath between _lub_ and _dub_. He drew and re-drew the curve of John’s face, his nose, his eyes in the very moment he’d called Sherlock a machine. He penned and labeled hearts.

(And somewhere near the end of its pages, Sherlock’s notebook hides a prayer, a mantra scrawled in the dwindling hours before he met Moran: _I love you. I love you. I love. You._ The words contract together and push apart resolutely, pulse through him with the only idea that keeps him moving. _I love you. I love you. God, I love you._ )

~

He doesn’t wait. Can’t. Sherlock’s phone buzzes endlessly during the cab ride back to Baker Street; finally, he shuts the damn thing down.

Mycroft had warned him. John had moved back to Baker Street only two weeks prior, alone after the death of his wife. Mycroft had warned him, briefed him on John-post-Sherlock, John-decimated-after-the-fall. No amount of preparation, no number of grainy CCTV feeds, could have prepared Sherlock for this. John looks older, looks beaten, and looks as though he is about to slam the door in Sherlock’s face.

“Please wait,” Sherlock breathes. He is trembling, shivering past the ice in John’s eyes to try to _reach_ him. He will beg. “Please.”

John says nothing, but he does not close Sherlock out. Sherlock steps forward, presses his notebook urgently to John’s chest, silently begs the man to take it. John’s flinch shatters him then and there; Sherlock finds himself nearly clinging to one side of the doorframe.

“Take it, John,” he mutters. “It’s the only thing I have.”

They stare at one another. John’s gaze shifts so quickly it is unreadable.

“You’ve got me, you stupid arse.”

John says nothing more, just turns perfunctorily on his heel and stomps up the stairs to 221B, leaving the front door open wide.

~

Sherlock’s armchair is filled with unpacked boxes. John does not offer to move them when Sherlock reaches the flat; the message is clear enough. He shrugs off his long coat and hangs it on the rack, a courtesy never done when Sherlock was confident that he was more than a guest in this place. John settles into his own armchair. He does not offer tea. He does not even glance over as Sherlock sits stiffly on the couch.

John reads for hours, eyes slowly tracing over every word, re-lining every stroke of pen. Sherlock stares anywhere but John, resisting the tug the man has over his gaze.

Sometime past midnight Sherlock finally gives in and looks to John. His lined face has gone soft, his eyes sad, and with a single rough finger he is caressing something on one of the pages. Sherlock stands and walks over to him, glances to the page. It is filled with sketches: pictures of anatomically correct hearts, one of many studies of John’s scarred shoulder, endless glimpses of John’s face frozen in laughter.

“I don’t look anything like that,” he finally says, finger resting on one of the drawings.

 Sherlock says the first thing that comes to mind. “Well then, I’ve done a shite job, haven’t I?”

John tilts his head up, stares at Sherlock for a long time. He understands. “I suppose you could’ve done a lot worse.”

There, beneath the heavy brow and deep blue eyes, sparks a hint of a smile. John nods to the armchair adjacent to him, weighed down with boxes.

He had not realized how sluggishly his blood had been churning until suddenly it seemed to speed up, to rush through his veins. Heart quickening, Sherlock clears the boxes from the chair and sits again, watching John intently. All there is is the occasional turning of pages and the rapid acceleration of his heart. He is home.

~

**Plus One**

Sherlock falls asleep, sprawled in the armchair. John continues to read. He stops when he comes to a page scrawled with a singular message. It echoes loudly in his ears, ripples down his throat, and comes to reverberate deeply in his chest. John nearly shakes with it: it roars and cries and beats manically at him. He drops the notebook, breathes deeply. The words settle as he forces himself to take those full breaths. They become a warm, slow whisper, a hush barely caught over the rustle of sheets and the space between two bodies but nonetheless understood. Not mistaken. In the other armchair, Sherlock sleeps. John softly pads over to him, leans over until his nose is pressed into Sherlock’s loose ringlets. There he mouths the lines of his quaking heart.

~          

Molly was hired as the head pathologist at Queen Charlotte’s but John’s been teaching at St. Bart’s for over two years, which is how Sherlock finds his arms full of organ bags one afternoon in February. His official return announced only a week ago, Sherlock will not start working again with Lestrade until next Wednesday, leaving him plenty of time to assist John in preparing for his class (but John will be quitting the job at the end of the term to help him on cases, much to Sherlock’s not-so-subtle delight).

It’s penance, in a form, though Sherlock hardly minds it; John had demanded his help the morning after Sherlock’s return (after a rather deserved bout of shouting and a furious trip to the shooting range on the part of John). As recompense goes, Sherlock had anticipated worse than being forced to spend time with his once-again flatmate. The last two weeks had been better than Sherlock dared to imagine: quiet, rippled with laughter and an occasional swirl of sadness. John is angry, yes, but John is thrilled.

Currently Sherlock and John are setting up dissection trays for John’s first year course. They silently snip at thick plastic biohazard bags and drain the organs from their preserving fluid. Sherlock arranges the organs (lung, brain, kidney, heart) on the dissection tray while John follows behind him, setting up the tools and pining in various numbered labels. Occasionally, if Sherlock has taken just a moment too long setting a kidney along the proper axis, John will come up from behind and reach around to place scalpels and probes on the tray’s thick blue lining. John’s chest comes in warm contact with Sherlock’s back, and arms brush in a motion that seems too professional, too carefully contained. Like everything else involving John, Sherlock allows himself to sink into the perfunctory points of contact. He shifts fractionally into John’s every touch. Momentarily distracted, he has fallen behind again.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock glances down to the tray, already set with tools but lacking an organ. John hovers at his side, too close. Sherlock wills himself to unfurl into John then and there, to bridge the space between them with skin. Instead, he lowers his eyes to the tray.

“John, could you hand me a heart?”

He regrets it almost immediately. John pulls away from him and Sherlock feels his stomach clench unpleasantly. The soft _shick_ of scissors through plastic resonates through the mortuary. John chuckles and returns to his place next to Sherlock, but does not set the heart down.

“Take it.”

John stretches out a heart heavy hand. There is a smile tugging across his face, gentle and mirrored in his eyes with something Sherlock can’t quite name. John squeezes the heart gently, comically. Sherlock stares. John sighs.

“You’re utterly daft.”

And then there is a heart in Sherlock’s hands and a breath at Sherlock’s lips. John’s chest presses against his as the shorter man arches up on his tiptoes and spreads his latex and formaldehyde covered hands out behind him. The distance between them is minute but John is waiting, balancing there under Sherlock’s gaze. A smile and a quicksilver grin in return, and then both melt under a merging of lips.

Their first kiss ends almost as soon as it begins—John loses his footing and pitches forward and despite all of his best efforts still manages to get the embalming fluid on his hands all over Sherlock’s shirt. The heart ends up having to sit on the counter, because as soon as Sherlock can pull off his gloves his hands find John’s hips. The pull between them is equal, attractive, and they come together in one single line of legs and lips. John brushes his fingers up Sherlock’s chest and over his shoulder; they ramble up his back and finally clench into his hair. All the while John breaks their kisses with small breaths and exclamations, as though he can hardly believe (and perhaps he can’t) what it is he holds so closely to him, what it is that shudders under each brush of fingertip. Sherlock is equally eager to feel John transform under his touch: tense shoulders go limp and the expanse of his neck suddenly seems miles long and in need of traversing. John presses against Sherlock, hard and hot, grabbing and gasping and returning each of Sherlock’s kisses with one even more forceful and needy.

And for the first time they feel each pulse of the other through their lips: their hearts pound one beat off of the other, syncopated and strong and finally whole.

~

Class is inexplicably cancelled. When John’s TA arrives to help prepare for the lesson, she finds a scribbled note on the counter, propped up by a defiantly misplaced heart.

 


End file.
